With Beacon technology, we are giving the stationary retail trade a highly effective instrument to survive in competition with e-commerce and win back market shares that we thought had been lost. This is what we offer our customers to sell our products. And which is theoretically true. In practice, however, many marketing agencies are still learning how to use this instrument properly… In my opinion, the enormous potential of this technology is currently still being wasted at großzügig Indoornavigation, acquisition of customer data, analysis of purchasing behavior and the associated optimization of internal processes, integrated loyalty programs and mobile payment are already available at möglich. It is not yet possible to predict which applications the future will bring. Only our own creativity sets the limits. Successfully used Beacon technology means real and targeted communication with the customer. This is the added value that everyone wants. But too rarely is the existing technology used in the in the necessary consequence. PUSH-SPAM IS THE END OF BEACON TECHNOLOGY. Far too many providers reduce beacon technology to the format of a digital direct mail item. “Oh… here’s a customer. So we send him a push message. And another one so he won’t forget us. Attention, the customer walks 15 meters further. Let’s send him a new push message…” In this way the multiple possibilities of the iBeacon technology are reduced to trivial proximity marketing. It becomes advertising leaflet 3.0. It becomes content flushed without meaning or reason. Simply because you can. And in this “form of advertising” there is the danger that the beacon hype is over before we have exploited its full potential. Because it is clear that in order to communicate with him, the end customer must also download the corresponding app. He must keep his mailbox open. But if there is nothing in this mailbox but annoying and redundant advertising he will react just like any of us at home. He sticks the sticker “Please do not insert any advertising” on his mailbox. He will cut the app and our direct line to him mercilessly. And another thing: He’ll probably be pretty angry about it, because he went through downloading the app in advance. And now he’s dissapointed. And there is a danger that all of us who want to work successfully in this sector will take the blame for this. THINKING FROM THE CUSTOMER’S POINT OF VIEW. As developers we therefore have to think creatively and above all absolutely from the end customer’s point of view. Our business is only at first sight business with the retailer. So that our promises to the retailer can be fulfilled and so that he can benefit from its advantages and win back its market shares , we need to reach the end customers with our products. The key is to make ourselves as product developers and our customers aware that it is only the end customer who offers the retailer the mentioned advantages. He can do this by using the necessary app and submitting his data and contact details. The average user uses 26 applications per month. One of them should be that of our customer, the retailer. So we can either use an existing app with high distribution. Or we try to enter the hit list of his preferred applications with our own product. For this it has to be good. We have to offer him a good, a better shopping experience than he would have without using the application. Regardless of all technical feasibility and gimmicks, which satisfy our developer’s pride in particular, I believe that mature, simple usability and intelligent features are the decisive arguments. The advantages for the end customer are not in the technology itself. But in that it makes things easier for him: How does he find the preferred products? How can he – because this is also a possible feature – connect more easily to the WLAN offered? How can they pay securely and easily and at the same time receive their bonus points for a purchase or another activity on the net? Can he do that with an app? These are the things we have to work on to turn the current beacon hype into a sustainably successful technology. What we do not need to work on is to find the next way to waste even more advertising on yet another channel on the customer.